Chapter Nine
This is going to work out better than I hoped.
Oscar was, if nothing else, a bright man.
As leader of the Septum Port Alliance, he’d learned to deal with every kind of man—the plotters, the brutes, the liars, and everything in between.
Men who dropped their anchor in his inlet or on his beaches always had to deal with him directly.
They had to pay a toll or, sometimes, they would barter with goods.
Oscar had accumulated so much merchandise over the years that he actually had a merchant stall in town where he sold it.
The business was quite lucrative. He was a man who was all about opportunity.
And this was a big one.
It had all started last year.
Given that he had a port on the south side of England, and a very busy one, he had anywhere from ten to twenty ships a day coming in or going out.
He had an entire group of men who managed the ships for him, and that included the safety of the port itself.
Although there was a small inlet, it was only big enough for five ships, depending on the size of them, which meant any other ships that entered his area had to drop anchor on the beach, and that could leave them vulnerable to the many pirate groups that marauded in the area.
One of those groups was Triton’s Hellions.
Oscar had had a few run-ins with Abelard de Bottreaux, the commander of that particular pirate faction.
Triton’s Hellions mostly stayed in Bristol Bay, but they also roamed the Irish Sea.
Even though they tended to stay to the north, there had been occasions when they came south, including last year.
That had been a particularly disruptive visit.
They’d closed in on the beaches of Sidmouth and immediately cornered four cogs that had been clustered on the west side of Sidmouth’s beach.
Three of those ships had come from Malta and points east, while the fourth ship had come from somewhere along the African coast. Fortunately, they had managed to offload most of the goods before the pirates came in and ordered their vessels, but when they refused to cooperate with Abelard and his men, Abelard ordered the ships torched.
All four vessels had gone up in flames, and due to the wind blowing from the south, embers had been transported upon the breeze like flotsam upon the ocean, to the homes and businesses along the beach.
Most of the roofs were sod, but some were thatched, and those roofs caught fire.
A large portion of those who lived that close to the water ended up homeless because of the fire that spread very quickly.
Oscar had been helpless to watch a chunk of his town burn even as he sent his army down to fight the fire.
Axen Castle, his hereditary homestead, sat back on a hill overlooking both the lands to the north and the sea to the south, a position of maximum strategy, and given the castle was built of stone, there was very little chance of it burning.
It did, however, have flammable things in the bailey, including the stables, so the roof of the stable was wetted down and the hay, which was sitting outside because of the warm and dry weather as of late, had been moved into the armories and any other outbuilding that didn’t have a flammable roof.
But that seemed to be the least of his troubles.
As the fire was going on, Abelard and his Hellions took that as an invitation to raid the village.
They used the chaos of the fire to their advantage and proceeded to confiscate valuables or anything else they wanted as the villagers fled in terror.
How Abelard managed to keep his three vessels away from the fire that was burning brightly was anybody’s guess, but he’d managed to do so.
He stole horses and coin and many other things, taking his booty into his vessels and then setting sail, leaving devastation in his wake.
It wasn’t until three days later when the fire was completely out and people were returning to what was left of their homes that stories of the pirates’ thievery began to trickle back to Oscar.
In the end, Triton’s Hellions had greatly damaged Sidmouth and her occupants.
And that had given Oscar an idea.
With Sidmouth badly damaged, Oscar was concerned with the perception of the other members of the Septum Port Alliance.
It made him look like a weakling, and, as the leader of their alliance, that did not sit well with him.
He’d been dealing with the fallout of that horrific fire when he received word that his granddaughter was to be married, something that enraged him because he’d had no part in her betrothal.
Not that he paid a lot of attention to her or his daughter, but as the head of the family, he felt strongly that he should have been the one to find Ophelia a husband.
She was, after all, his heiress. Thankfully, her foolish betrothed had hightailed it off to the priesthood, where he could live a pious and celibate life, which gave Oscar the opportunity to find his granddaughter a husband who would benefit him.
And he had someone in mind.
He’d heard, long ago, that a distant cousin was a Blackchurch Guild trainer.
Some relative on his wife’s side of the family.
He knew that the Blackchurch Guild and Triton’s Hellions were allied through familial bloodlines.
Everyone in western England knew that. But it had taken him a solid week to remember just which cousin served Blackchurch, and when he did, he did the intelligent thing by writing a letter to the older brother of the cousin who was a trainer.
In any patriarchal structure, the eldest male was always in charge of the family, which meant the younger brother at Blackchurch was not in charge of his destiny so long as his brother had something to say about it.
That was exactly what Oscar was hoping for.
Therefore, he sent a missive to a Royston de Royans and very politely inquired as to whether or not the man’s brother was married.
In a stroke of amazing fortune, he was told that not only was Creston not married, but he was far too old to still be unmarried and Royston was very interested in Oscar’s suggestion of a marriage between his granddaughter and Royston’s younger brother.
And here they were.
That was why Oscar had put up with Creston’s arrogance.
That was why he’d let the man talk to him the way he had, with a rude tone and an even ruder manner.
Oh, but he was so very wise to bite his tongue and let Creston threaten and intimidate him, because it was all part of his master plan.
He was so close to marrying his granddaughter into Blackchurch, where he could force her to do his bidding once she was rooted.
That was the plan, anyway. But what he intended was beyond destruction of Blackchurch and its pirate kin.
He intended total annihilation.
Once Oscar achieved his goal, the rest of the port alliance lords would once again look up to him and realize how intelligent and infallible he was.
Make no mistake—this was all about pride and ego to Oscar, but it was also about vengeance.
Any man who got the upper hand on a major pirate faction and a warrior training guild would be a hero to many.
Oscar was determined to be that hero.
But he had to get his granddaughter married first.
As the sun began to rise on the day of the marriage, Oscar finally breathed a sigh of relief.
He was closer to his end goals as the seconds of the day ticked away.
A half-hour after dawn, as the priest said the final blessing over Creston and Ophelia, Oscar shed a tear. But not for the reason anyone thought.
His tears of joy were about something else entirely.
Now, his plan could go forward.